E. O. Wilson's Darwinian Ethics

This is "E. O. Wilson's Darwinian Ethics of Natural Law," from the blog "Darwinian Conservatism" by Larry Arnhart.

"..If we saw Wilson's biology of moral sentiments as part of the natural law tradition, we might see that much (if not all) of what Aquinas said about the natural inclinations supporting natural law would be confirmed by modern biological research. For example, we might conclude that the biological study of the social bonding between male and female and between parents and children provides a modern, scientific way of understanding what Aquinas identifies as the natural inclinations towards conjugal bonding and parental care. Aquinas's reasoning about marriage--that monogamy is completely natural, polygyny only partly natural, and polyandry completely unnatural--makes sense in the light of modern biological theories of human mating and parenting. Aquinas explained the natural inclinations by appealing to Aristotle's biological account of human nature compared to the natures of other animals. Wilson's biology of the moral sentiments continues in that same tradition of Aristotelian biological naturalism..."

The rest of the essay here.